How Experts Attract The Right Opportunities and Customers

Dear Legend,

have you felt overwhelmed with information lately? (I have) Between social media, podcasts, books, and yes, newsletters! There has never been more noise and what Sam Horn coined “Infobesity” in the world today.

So how do we make decisions? Who do we follow? Who do we trust?

Turns out, our brains process about 11 million bits of information per second, but can only consciously handle about 40–50 bits at once.

To survive, it filters ruthlessly and it filters for what stands out. The late nobel prize winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman explains that the brain prefers things that are:

• Easy to understand

• Familiar

• Repeated

So the more clear, simple, and repeatable your message is, the more trustworthy and credible it feels without needing more proof. This is the Cognitive Ease Bias: “If it’s easy to process, it must be true.”

Experts understand this, so they ruthlessly simplify to stand for one thing in your mind.

“You can’t influence if people don’t know what to come to you for” Katelyn Bourgoin, Founder, Why We Buy.

But how?

This is where beginners make mistakes (trust me, I’ve made them many times myself)

• They pick comprehensive vs. compelling
  ↳ “If I don’t explain everything, I’ll leave money on the table” Problem is the brain cannot remember a long list of things.

• They fear picking wrong, so they don’t pick at all

  ↳ “What if I choose the wrong lane?” So they hedge. They water it down. They try to cover too much. And as a result, they become forgettable.

• They think clarity means picking their forever identity

  ↳“If I say I help X, then I’ll be stuck there forever.” This is the deep emotional hang up that prevents people from choosing one thing.

Here’s what I’ve learned from how true experts approach it and what I uncovered in my conversation with Katelyn Bourgoin:

(Katelyn is the “Buyer Psychologist” and 4X founder, she went from filing personal bankruptcy after a startup failure to building Why We Buy, one of the most beloved newsletters in tech and marketing. Today, she helps thousands of marketers master buyer psychology, and her insights are trusted by teams at LinkedIn, Shopify, and Meta.)

❤️ Focus will feel like grief

Katelyn co-created Unignorable, a wildly successful offer that made over $1M in two years. And then…she walked away from it 🤯

Why?

Because even though it was profitable, it pulled her off course. “It confused my audience,” she said. “It wasn’t aligned with what I truly wanted to be known for.” (Unignorable was about “Personal Branding”, while she wanted to be known for “Buyer Psychology”)

That’s the brutal truth about focus: sometimes you have to let go of something working to make room for something legendary. And yes, it does feel like grief and that’s ok.

🧠 It’s not doing less of everything, it’s doing more of better things.

Even the prolific James Clear, author of Atomic Habits, walked away from a digital marketing newsletter with 50,000 subscribers because he realized he wanted to be known for habits. And he went deep into the world of habits, with one of the all-time best seller, Atomic Habits leading the charge along with an app, a journal, and other offers.

To help you standout, influence, and pick a lane, here are three tactics to help you do that 🧰:

1/ The “Venn of You” Exercise (A Focus Tool You’ll Actually Use)

This comes straight from Katelyn Bourgoin’s retired Unignorable program but I’ll give it to you in plain speak:

Draw three circles:

1. What are you obsessed with?
   (The thing you research for fun. The itch you can’t stop scratching.)

2. What are you great at?
   (The thing people already come to you for. The thing you have the skill for.)

3. What do people want and pay for?
   (The thing people are actually searching for, asking for, or hiring for.)

Where those circles overlap, that’s your lane. Not forever. Just for right now. Long enough to sharpen your focus.

2/ Focus on the thing that is unreasonably easy

Maybe the three circles exercise still give you many paths or you don’t have anything you’re great at yet.

Here’s what you do: focus on the thing that is unreasonably easy. Do a bunch of things, one at a time and get good at them, until one rises to the top in terms of ease. That’s where your talents x your efforts bring unreasonable outcomes.

3/ Take intentional actions

Once you have a lane, this is where you get intentional about:

• How you communicate: remove ideas and words until there is only one thing that aligns with your lane.

  ❌ “I help entrepreneurs, small businesses, execs, non-profits, and creators with strategy, mindset, marketing, branding, growth, operations, and scaling!”

  ✅ “I help new entrepreneurs make money without anxiety”

• Who you show up with: “We trust people who associate with people we already trust” partner with and show up with people your target audience already know and trust. Don’t do random interviews and partnerships.

• What you take on: Alex Hormozi once said “the more success you get, the harder it is to focus”, because more and more opportunities will come your way. Start with no. And then try to look at whether there are any reasons to say yes and what you will give up by saying yes.

Remember this: influence isn’t about being loud. It’s about being unforgettable for one thing. 🤘🏽

Want more?

Katelyn shares a number of ways we can be unignorable and leverage buyer psychology to influence people to buy our ideas, vision, and offers. Listen on: Apple, Spotify, or on the web (Katelyn also shares how she went from bankruptcy to making 7 figures.) Last week, I shared her 10 secrets to get people to buy what you sell on LinkedIn that was viewed by 2,984 people. I also posted a short reel revealing the brutal truth anyone building a brand needs to know.

Make your mark, live your legend 🤘🏽

I’ll see you on Wednesday (Influence Science will now come on Wednesdays! 👏🏽)

Howie Chan

Creator of Legend Letters

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